Obama's 2013: A very tough year

By Julian Zelizer, CNN Contributor

Updated 7:56 AM ET, Mon December 16, 2013

Chat with us in Facebook Messenger. Find out what's happening in the world as it unfolds.

Photos:2013: The year in pictures

2013: The year in pictures – January 1: People watch New Year's fireworks along Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Photographers worldwide captured deadly conflicts, devastating storms and other memorable moments throughout the year. Click through the gallery to see 2013 unfold from beginning to end.

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2013: The year in pictures – January 4: Tammy Holmes and her grandchildren take refuge under a jetty as a wildfire rages nearby in the Tasmanian town of Dunalley, Australia.

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2013: The year in pictures – January 7: Alabama defensive lineman Alphonse Taylor holds up a newspaper after Alabama defeated Notre Dame 42-14 in the BCS National Championship game. It was the second straight national title for the Crimson Tide.

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2013: The year in pictures – January 10: Protesters advance on police in De Doorns, South Africa. Farmworkers across the Western Cape were on strike at the time, demanding that their wages of 65 rand a day ($7.50 U.S.) be doubled.

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2013: The year in pictures – January 19: U.S. Army soldiers in Dover, Delaware, carry the flag-draped transfer case of Army Sgt. David J. Chambers, who was killed in Afghanistan.

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2013: The year in pictures – January 23: A truck is covered in ice as firefighters extinguish a massive blaze at a vacant warehouse in Chicago.

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2013: The year in pictures – January 24: A 29-year-old man, convicted of being part of a gang that carried out burglaries, has three fingers amputated in a public square in Shiraz, Iran. The man's sentence also included three years in prison and confiscation of his property.

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2013: The year in pictures – January 24: This outfit, seen in the Throne Room of Buckingham Palace, was worn by Princess Anne during Queen Elizabeth II's coronation on June 2, 1953. The year 2013 marked the 60th anniversary of the queen's coronation.

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2013: The year in pictures – January 28: A crowd in Nazare, Portugal, watches as surfing legend Garrett McNamara appears to break his own world record for the biggest wave ever surfed. The wave was estimated to be about 100 feet high.

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2013: The year in pictures – January 29: A military regiment in China's Heilongjiang province takes part in a morning exercise as temperatures dip to minus 30 degrees Celsius (minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit).

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2013: The year in pictures – February 1: Kashmiri Muslims stand on a tree as they offer prayers at the Hazratbal Shrine in Srinagar, India.

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2013: The year in pictures – February 3: Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh, right, greets his brother, San Francisco 49ers head coach Jim Harbaugh, after the Ravens won Super Bowl XLVII in New Orleans.

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2013: The year in pictures – February 3: Daily life carries on in Timbuktu, Mali, after the city was freed by the French Army. The city had been under the control of Islamist militants.

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2013: The year in pictures – February 5: Anaplastologist Hernan Baron displays a prosthetic eye at his studio in Bogota, Colombia.

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2013: The year in pictures – February 8: People shield themselves from snow as a blizzard arrives in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston.

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2013: The year in pictures – February 8: Horses are hoisted in the air by a crane as they are transferred from a cargo ship onto a truck in Surabaya, Indonesia.

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2013: The year in pictures – February 10: Marching band members wait to perform in the procession that leads to the banks of Sangam, the confluence of three holy rivers, during the Maha Kumbh Mela festival in Allahabad, India.

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2013: The year in pictures – February 10: People celebrate in clouds of colored dust after the Color Run 5K in Sydney.

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2013: The year in pictures – February 15: A meteorite contrail is seen over Chelyabinsk, Russia, about 930 miles east of Moscow. More than 1,500 people were hurt, authorities said, and thousands of buildings were damaged after a meteor exploded in the skies with the force of about 30 early nuclear bombs.

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2013: The year in pictures – February 20: A U.S. Marine drinks cobra blood during a jungle survival program at a base in Sattahip, Thailand.

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2013: The year in pictures – February 23: A sleeping giant, Boris the polar bear, undergoes a physical exam at the animal hospital of Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium in Tacoma, Washington. A team of veterinarians, technicians and staff also performed a root canal and some minor eye surgery on the 27-year-old bear.

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2013: The year in pictures – February 24: Actress Jennifer Lawrence falls during the Academy Awards as she walks up stairs to receive the Best Actress Oscar for "Silver Linings Playbook."

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2013: The year in pictures – February 25: Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men gather at a yeshiva in Jerusalem during the Purim holiday.

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2013: The year in pictures – March 2: A six-car bullet train in northern Japan sits in the snow after derailing in blizzard conditions. Nobody aboard the train was injured.

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2013: The year in pictures – March 6: A crying woman holds a picture of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez outside the military hospital where he died one day earlier in Caracas, Venezuela. Chavez, who had battled cancer, was 58.

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2013: The year in pictures – March 10: A Pakistani Christian woman weeps after her home was damaged by an angry Muslim mob during clashes between Christians and Muslims in Lahore, Pakistan.

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2013: The year in pictures – March 10: A man wearing a Union flag suit dances as he casts his vote on whether the Falkland Islands should remain a British territory. Residents of the islands, which Argentina calls the Malvinas, voted to remain under British rule.

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2013: The year in pictures – March 11: The One World Trade Center building emerges from the clouds in New York's night sky. Construction on the office complex, which is going up on the site of the original World Trade Center, is set to be completed in early 2014.

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2013: The year in pictures – March 11: Harry Styles of the boy band One Direction poses with calipers as he is measured for a wax figure by Madame Tussauds.

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2013: The year in pictures – March 13: A baby is helped to swim in Kiev, Ukraine.

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2013: The year in pictures – March 18: A Bangladeshi boy looks inside a car vandalized by activists of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party during a general strike in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

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2013: The year in pictures – March 21: A transgender Hindu devotee dances during Lathmaar Holi celebrations in the village of Barsana, India.

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2013: The year in pictures – March 23: Soccer star David Beckham falls during a visit with Wuhan Zall, a professional team in Wuhan, China.

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2013: The year in pictures – March 24: Hooded penitents from the La Paz brotherhood walk to a church in Seville, Spain, to take part in a procession during Easter Holy Week.

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2013: The year in pictures – April 3: A 2-year-old Florida panther is released into the wild by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission in West Palm Beach, Florida. The panther and its sister had been raised at the center since they were 5 months old. They were rescued after their mother was found dead.

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2013: The year in pictures – April 5: Natacha Ross is evaluated during an audition for 6-year old ballet hopefuls at the School of American Ballet in New York.

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2013: The year in pictures – April 7: Hermano Hermes performs exorcism rituals in La Cumbre, Colombia. He says he has helped thousands of people get rid of evil spirits possessing them.

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2013: The year in pictures – April 8: Russian President Vladimir Putin is attacked by an activist of the Ukrainian women rights group Femen as German Chancellor Angela Merkel looks on in Hannover, Germany.

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2013: The year in pictures – April 9: A portrait of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is arranged in a condolence room at the British Embassy in Beijing. Thatcher died the day before at the age of 87.

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2013: The year in pictures – April 11: A protester aims a rock at a huddle of shielded riot police after students held a march demanding free education in Santiago, Chile.

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2013: The year in pictures – April 11: An Air Koryo attendant wears a pin showing portraits of the late North Korean leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. Air Koryo is the world's only 1-star airline on Skytrax, a consultancy that has ratings and reviews for more than 681 airlines.

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2013: The year in pictures – April 13: Indian villager Fatima Begum kisses the head of her 18-month-old daughter, Roona, at their hut in Jirania, India. Roona suffers from hydrocephalus, a disorder causing cerebral fluid to build up in the brain. Doctors had given her just a few months to live, but she recently underwent surgery to improve her condition.

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2013: The year in pictures – April 15: Police officers stand over marathon runner Bill Iffrig as a second explosion sounds near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Three people were killed and at least 264 were injured in the terror attack.

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2013: The year in pictures – April 17: Outside the United Nations office in New Delhi, India, a young girl from Pakistan cries after being flung on the ground by her mother during a protest against alleged human rights violations in Pakistan.

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2013: The year in pictures – April 19: Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is seen in a boat at the time of his capture in Watertown, Massachusetts.

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2013: The year in pictures – April 24: Opponents of same-sex marriage protest in Paris after it was legalized by the country's National Assembly.

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2013: The year in pictures – April 25: Homes severely damaged by Hurricane Sandy are seen in Mantoloking, New Jersey, six months after Sandy devastated the Jersey shore and New York City and pounded coastal areas of New England.

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2013: The year in pictures – April 30: A drilling worker takes a break in an unfinished geothermal pool next to the Kenya Electricity Generating Company's two active geothermal plants. Kenya was the first African country to build geothermal energy sources.

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2013: The year in pictures – May 3: Hong Kong skyscrapers, as seen from the ground floor.

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2013: The year in pictures – May 3: Farmers transport watermelons on camels on their way to market in Allahabad, India.

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2013: The year in pictures – May 8: Kathy Brown, Virginia Aguiar and Jane Crook react to a guilty verdict for Jodi Arias outside the Maricopa County Superior Court in Phoenix. Arias was convicted of murdering her ex-boyfriend, Travis Alexander, in 2008.

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2013: The year in pictures – May 8: The Tungurahua volcano is seen from the village of Cotalo, Ecuador. Tungurahua keeps generating explosions and expelling incandescent boulders that roll down its flanks.

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2013: The year in pictures – May 9: A man overcome by fumes falls out of a window as a fire burns at the Lahore Development Authority Plaza in Lahore, Pakistan.

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2013: The year in pictures – May 14: The Soyuz TMA-07M spacecraft, carrying three crew members home from the International Space Station, lands in a remote area near the town of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan.

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2013: The year in pictures – May 16: U.S. President Barack Obama looks to see if it is still raining as a Marine holds an umbrella for him during a news conference in the Rose Garden of the White House.

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2013: The year in pictures – May 20: MS-13 gang members languish in one of the three overcrowded "gang cages" in the Quezaltepeque police station in San Salvador, El Salvador. Initially, the cages were designed to be 72-hour holding cells for common criminals and two rival gangs, but many individuals had been imprisoned for more than a year.

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2013: The year in pictures – May 23: David Lee Estep waits for his parents on a pile of rubble that used to be their home in Moore, Oklahoma. Moore was hit by a massive EF5 tornado that killed 24 people, including seven students at an elementary school.

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2013: The year in pictures – June 1: A protester is hit by tear gas in the Besiktas neighborhood of Istanbul. Thousands of people gathered to protest the government and its plans to demolish Istanbul's Gezi Park.

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2013: The year in pictures – June 5: Ajabu, a 2-month-old orphaned baby elephant, is given a dust bath after being fed at an event to mark World Environment Day in Nairobi, Kenya.

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2013: The year in pictures – June 11: A protester is hit by a water cannon during clashes in Taksim Square in Istanbul.

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2013: The year in pictures – June 17: A military police officer pepper-sprays a protester in Rio de Janeiro. Millions of Brazilians took to the streets this summer to protest years of dissatisfaction and discontent with their government.

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2013: The year in pictures – June 20: A reserved sign is placed on a table at Holsten's ice cream parlor in Bloomfield, New Jersey, on the day actor James Gandolfini died of a heart attack in Italy. Holsten's is where Gandolfini filmed the final scene of the final episode of the television series "The Sopranos."

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2013: The year in pictures – June 22: South Korean soldiers wear North Korean military uniforms as they take part in a Korean War re-enactment in Chuncheon, South Korea.

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2013: The year in pictures – July 3: Opponents of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy celebrate in Cairo after Morsy was ousted in a military coup.

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2013: The year in pictures – July 3: Assistant State Attorney John Guy, left, and Assistant State Attorney Bernie de la Rionda display the hooded sweatshirt worn by teenager Trayvon Martin on the night he was shot by neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida. A jury found Zimmerman not guilty of second-degree murder.

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2013: The year in pictures – July 21: Activists from the Orangutan Information Center remove an air rifle pellet from the face of an orangutan that was rescued from a palm oil plantation in Padang Tualang, Indonesia.

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2013: The year in pictures – July 23: The Duchess of Cambridge holds her newborn son, Prince George, outside St. Mary's Hospital in London. George is third in line to the British throne after his grandfather Prince Charles and his father, Prince William.

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2013: The year in pictures – July 29: A Palestinian girl plays beside her family's tent in a poverty-stricken area of Gaza.

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2013: The year in pictures – August 14: A police vehicle is pushed off the 6th October Bridge in Cairo by supporters of ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy.

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2013: The year in pictures – August 25: Robin Thicke and Miley Cyrus perform on stage during the MTV Video Music Awards in New York. The provocative performance dominated the headlines and had many people discussing whether it was too risque.

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2013: The year in pictures – August 25: A man threatens to cut the rope of a Greenpeace protester at the Belgian Grand Prix in Spa, Belgium.

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2013: The year in pictures – August 28: The "Let Freedom Ring" celebration commemorated the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, a pivotal moment in the civil rights movement.

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2013: The year in pictures – September 6: A frog is launched in the air as a rocket takes off at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

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2013: The year in pictures – September 10: The Tribute in Light, a collection of 88 searchlights next to the site of the World Trade Center, is seen through a fish-eye lens as it rises above buildings in lower Manhattan.

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2013: The year in pictures – September 12: A pair of waterspouts form on Lake Michigan, southeast of Kenosha, Wisconsin.

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2013: The year in pictures – September 16: The Remington 870 shotgun used by Washington Navy Yard shooter Aaron Alexis has an etching on it that reads "Not what yall say!" Alexis killed 12 people and injured eight before he was fatally shot.

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2013: The year in pictures – September 17: A bull charges over a photographer during the Toro de la Vega festival in Tordesillas, Spain.

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2013: The year in pictures – September 17: The severely damaged side of the Costa Concordia is visible after it was successfully lifted upright in Isola del Giglio, Italy. The cruise ship capsized last year.

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2013: The year in pictures – September 21: People take cover behind a counter at the Westgate shopping mall after a shootout in Nairobi, Kenya. The Somali terror group Al-Shabaab, an affiliate of al Qaeda, claimed responsibility for a bloody four-day siege at the upscale mall. At least 67 people were killed.

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2013: The year in pictures – September 25: Police push away a refrigerator as they enter the Madrid apartment of Maria Isabel Rodriguez Romero. Romero and her family of six were evicted by the State City Hall Housing Company. Spain is slowly emerging from a two-year recession, but it still has a high unemployment rate and evictions have rapidly increased as borrowers are unable to pay their mortgages.

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2013: The year in pictures – September 28: Nikos Michaloliakos, leader of the extreme-right Golden Dawn party, is escorted from police headquarters in Athens, Greece. He faces charges of running a criminal organization following the slaying of an anti-fascist musician.

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2013: The year in pictures – September 30: A woman in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, suffers an asthma attack after tear gas was used during an anti-government demonstration on the anniversary of the 1991 coup against former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

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2013: The year in pictures – October 2: A police officer is engulfed in flames after being hit by a Molotov cocktail thrown by protesters marking the anniversary of the Tlatelolco massacre in Mexico City.

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2013: The year in pictures – October 12: Buckshot the horse rolls on rough gravel to scratch an itch at the Wagon Wheel Ranch in Frederick County, Virginia.

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2013: The year in pictures – October 20: A woman mourns during the funeral of Bahraini political prisoner Hussain Mahdi Habib in the village of Sitra, Bahrain. Habib, 20, escaped from prison on May 19 and was found dead on October 19 after he was allegedly shot near the coastal village of al-Malkiyah.

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2013: The year in pictures – October 30: A 50-ton southern right whale swims under a boat in Peninsula Valdez, Argentina.

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2013: The year in pictures – November 13: A member of a governmental forensic team unearths the remains of a mother and her teenage daughter from a shallow unmarked grave deep in the Amazonian jungle in southeastern Peru.

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2013: The year in pictures – November 16: A woman kisses a police officer during a protest of a high-speed train line in Susa, Italy.

2013: The year in pictures – November 19: A man fans flames in Tanauan, Philippines, a week after Typhoon Haiyan ripped through the country. Haiyan, one of the strongest storms in recorded history, left thousands dead and many more homeless.

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2013: The year in pictures – November 21: Karis, an 11-week-old lion cub, plays in fallen leaves in her enclosure at Blair Drummond Safari Park near Stirling, Scotland.

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2013: The year in pictures – November 23: Tribesmen lead their camels through the sand dunes of the Liwa desert in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

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2013: The year in pictures – December 1: Schoolchildren take lessons at a refugee camp on the outskirts of Jalalabad, Afghanistan.

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2013: The year in pictures – December 3: Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond signs a book of condolence at Glasgow City Chambers for those who died when a police helicopter crashed into a busy pub in Glasgow, Scotland. At least nine people were killed and 14 were seriously injured.

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2013: The year in pictures – December 4: First lady Michelle Obama reacts as 2-year-old Ashtyn Gardner loses her balance after greeting Sunny, one of the Obamas' dogs, during a holiday arts-and-crafts event at the White House.

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2013: The year in pictures – December 4: Xiao Wei lies on a hospital bed in Changsha, China, with his hand grafted to his ankle. Wei lost his right hand in a work accident and doctors were able to save it by temporarily grafting it to his ankle, local media reported. The hand was later reattached to his arm after the arm healed enough for surgery.

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2013: The year in pictures – December 5: A man holds a broken umbrella in Utrecht, Netherlands, as heavy storms move across northwestern Europe.

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2013: The year in pictures – December 5: An airplane passes the moon, leaving behind a vapor trail over Lahore, Pakistan.

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2013: The year in pictures – December 9: A Christian man chases a suspected Seleka officer in civilian clothes with a knife near the airport in Bangui, Central African Republic. The Seleka man was taken into custody by French forces, who fired warning shots to disperse the crowds. The Central African Republic is in the midst of a bloody civil war between various proclaimed Christian and Muslim militias and other rebel factions.

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2013: The year in pictures – December 10: Shepherds make their way back home with hundreds of sheep and horses after heavy snowfall in Van, Turkey.

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2013: The year in pictures – December 10: Girls dance during the memorial service for former South African President Nelson Mandela at FNB Stadium in Johannesburg. Thousands of South Africans and more than 90 heads of state gathered to honor the revered leader, who died on December 5. He was 95.

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2013: The year in pictures – December 11: A woman looks out a dusty bus window on the way to see Mandela's casket in Pretoria, South Africa. The anti-apartheid icon's casket arrived in the country's capital for public viewing.

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2013: The year in pictures – December 11: An impala leaps high into the air to avoid the gaping jaws of a crocodile in South Luangwa National Park in Zambia.

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2013: The year in pictures – December 11: A Gentoo penguin waddles up to a GoPro camera on Cuverville Island, Antarctica.

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2013: The year in pictures – December 13: A young boy looks through a fence as he waits in line with thousands of people hoping to board a bus that will take them to view Mandela's body in Pretoria, South Africa.

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2013: The year in pictures – December 14: Ukrainian protesters, angry about the government's decision to back away from a free-trade agreement with the European Union, rally in Kiev's Independence Square. The government spurned an agreement in November in favor of closer economic ties with Moscow.

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2013: The year in pictures – December 16: A giant panda plays in the snow at a zoo in Kunming, Yunnan province, in China.

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2013: The year in pictures – December 17: A Syrian man helps an injured man following an airstrike in Aleppo's Maadi neighborhood. Two children were among at least 13 people killed in new air strikes on a rebel-held district of Syria's main northern city of Aleppo, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

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2013: The year in pictures – December 18: A lioness wraps her paws around another lioness at the Moremi Game Reserve in Botswana.

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2013: The year in pictures – December 18: A baby elephant keeps cool with a shower at the Melbourne Zoo in Australia.

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2013: The year in pictures – December 20: Workers carve a 117-meter-long, 26-meter-high snow sculpture at the Sun Island Park during the 26th China Harbin International Snow Sculpture Art Expo in Harbin, Heilongjiang province, China.

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2013: The year in pictures – December 20: Alvaro Quiros of Spain putts on at the 6th green during the Royal Trophy Europe vs Asia Championship at the Dragon Lake Golf Club in Guangzhou, China.

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2013: The year in pictures – December 20: Chadian troops from a multinational African peacekeeping force drive past the body of a man who was suspected of having been an ex-Seleka militiaman, in Bangui, the capital of the violence-wracked Central African Republic.

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2013: The year in pictures – December 20: A man stacks bricks at a brick factory in Lalitpur, Nepal.

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2013: The year in pictures – December 20: President Barack Obama and his family depart via Marine One as they travel to his home state of Hawaii, from the South Lawn of the White House in Washington.

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2013: The year in pictures – December 21: At sunrise, Egyptian soldiers stand guard outside the temple of Qasr Qarun in Fayoum province, Egypt.

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2013: The year in pictures – December 21: An isolated polar bear searches for seals in the Arctic Ocean.

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2013: The year in pictures – December 21: A boy looks out the broken window of a plane that serves as shelter in a makeshift camp housing more than 40,000 people at M'poko Airport in Bangui, Central African Republic. They've displaced by recent violence in the country.

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2013: The year in pictures – December 22: Camels walk along sand dunes in desert during the Mazayin Dhafra Camel Festival in Abu Dhabi.

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2013: The year in pictures – December 23: Eve Grayson, a reindeer herder, feeds animals in Aviemore, Scotland. A Swedish Sami reindeer herder introduced reindeer to Scotland in 1952.

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2013: The year in pictures – December 23: Pope Francis, right, meets with Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI at the Mater Ecclesiae monastery at the Vatican.

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2013: The year in pictures – December 24: In Karachi, Pakistan, Shiite Muslims pray during a procession observing Chehlum, which marks a period of mourning for the 7th century Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammed.

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2013: The year in pictures – December 24: Astronaut Mike Hopkins participates in the second of two spacewalks in one week to repair a faulty water pump on the exterior of the International Space Station.

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2013: The year in pictures – December 25: Waves hit the jetty in the port of A Guarda in northwestern Spain. High winds and heavy rain battered parts of Europe on Monday and Tuesday, with some areas still reeling from the aftermath.

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2013: The year in pictures – December 25: Doctors prepare to operate on Huang Chuncai, a 36-year-old farmer suffering from a rare facial tumor, in Guangzhou, China.

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2013: The year in pictures – December 27: A boy carries a cardboard box in Juba, South Sudan, inside a United Nations compound that has become home to thousands of people displaced by recent fighting in the fledgling African nation.

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2013: The year in pictures – December 27: Egyptian protesters and police clash in Cairo during a demonstration against the government's declaration of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.

2013: The year in pictures – December 29: Rain-soaked New England Patriots fans cheer during the third quarter of an NFL football game between the Patriots and the Buffalo Bills.

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2013: The year in pictures – December 29: Supporters of the ruling Bangladesh Awami League beat a lawmaker and supporter of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party during a protest in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

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2013: The year in pictures – December 31: This photo from NASA shows the quiet corona and upper transition region of the sun on the last day of 2013.

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Story highlights

Julian Zelizer: President Barack Obama suffered many reverses in 2013

He says the glow of reelection faded fast, as Obama faced relentless opposition from GOP in Congress

Budget battles consumed valuable time, and the rollout of Obamacare was a major embarrassment, he says

Zelizer: Diplomatic deals on Iran and Syria provided some progress, but they may not hold

President Barack Obama has had a tough year. Although he began in January well aware of the immense problems that second-term presidents have historically confronted, it still doesn't seem that he was fully prepared for what was to come.

The past 12 months have found the president struggling to protect his domestic policies from attack and to maintain control of the national agenda.

Obama began the year enjoying the glow of his reelection against Mitt Romney. The year ended with his approval ratings plummeting; more and more Americans reported that they didn't trust Obama. Many of the main items on his agenda -- tax reform, gun control, immigration reform, and climate change -- are languishing.

What factors made this year so difficult? The toughest challenge that President Obama faced has been the continuing ruthless opposition he has encountered on Capitol Hill.

Julian Zelizer

Congressional Republicans have maintained their aggressive stance toward the administration, using the legislative process to achieve their objectives. The most tangible example of this strategy has been their threat to not raise the debt ceiling to force the president into several weeks of confrontation over the budget.

Even as their own party approval ratings plummeted, Republicans displayed a fierce determination to move forward with their strategy. Part of the problem stems from the fact that House Republicans play to their activist base, which will shape the primaries in their safe districts, rather than to independent voters. Tea party Republicans control enough of the House Caucus to force the speaker into their corner if he wants to keep his job.

Although Obama held his ground on the final outcome of the debt ceiling battle, the budget brinkmanship consumed a huge amount of valuable political time. If Congress passes the current budget deal, it will create a temporary pause in the budget wars, but the battles have already taken their toll

Republicans used other tactics as well. They stifled Obama's federal judicial nominations and executive appointments, until Senate Democrats became so frustrated that they changed the filibuster rules (a true sign of desperation in the upper chamber!).

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House Republicans refused to move forward with an immigration bill with bipartisan support sent to them from the Senate, and conducted many hearings about the president's health care program trying to find scandal in a story about poor implementation.

That brings us to Obama's second challenge in 2013, one that did not come from his opponents but the failures of management and organization of his own administration.

After his health care program had survived judicial and legislative challenge, all eyes turned to see what the Affordable Care Act would look like when the government launched the federal online health care exchange on October 1.

The results were not pretty. The website was filled with problems. The system kept crashing when people tried to sign on. It gradually became clear that the site was not even prepared to disseminate the information about who purchased insurance to the insurers.

Investigative stories soon revealed that high-level officials had been aware of these problems long before the web site went live, and failed to properly prepare. Two months later the administration was able to get the system running relatively smoothly, as far as we now know. But the embarrassment of the first weeks had its cost on American's confidence in the program, as well as in the President.

Political scientist Theda Skocpol has reminded us that Social Security policymaker Wilbur Cohen, an iconic figure in the 1950s and 1960s, once said that Medicare was 1% inspiration and 99% implementation. In a toxic political atmosphere, Obama caused huge problems for himself with the way that he handled the 99% of the job.

And Obama has continued to struggle in the politics of perception. This has been a weakness of this administration from the start of his first term.

Obama is a politician who maintains an unending belief in rationality. He refuses to embrace the frenzied media environment where it is often difficult to tell fact from fiction. Since taking office, Obama has continued to hold firm to the idea that over time voters will pay attention to the facts, and that the candidate with the best argument will win. Sometimes, particularly on foreign policy, his outlook has proven to be correct.

But on many other occasions he has seen how quickly the national conversation can shift as the president stood silent. When Obama persuaded Congress to pass an economic stimulus bill in 2009, the administration did little to sell the program. Even though it was a modest program, heavily weighted toward tax cuts rather than government spending, conservatives branded it as a failed big-spending program that did nothing for the economy.

When Congress passed a health care program in 2010 that left the private insurance system fully intact and avoided anything looking like a national health insurance plan, the White House stood still as Republicans defined the bill as big government gone wild.

It was especially important that the White House respond aggressively this year before the rollout, but it did not. The public never got fully behind the law, let alone understood it.

The President has also allowed small stories to shift public discussion. Most recently, he delivered a major address on inequality in America. The speech was meant to outline an agenda for the rest of his presidency and provide a framework for the policies that he would pursue.

Within a few days of the speech, however, many reporters had refocused on new pseudo-scandals, such as the revelation that Obama once lived with an uncle who was almost deported as a result of a drunken-driving arrest.

Administration officials might rightly complain that these kinds of stories have little to do with the underlying issues facing the nation, but they still reflect the kind of media environment all presidents face.

From marketing their programs to fighting back against smaller scandals, the President's team needs to do a much better job in the politics of information. In apparent recognition of this failing, the administration is adding John Podesta, Phil Schiliro, and Katie Beirne Fallon to the White House team.

In the realm of national security, Obama also struggled in the face of the ongoing disclosures over the NSA surveillance program. Major leaks have revealed the extensive spying that the United States has undertaken within the United States and overseas, revelations that have angered many of the President's supporters who had believed he would do things differently than President George W. Bush.

The one area where the president has experienced slightly more positive outcomes are in foreign policy. In confronting a series of crises -- including Syria's use of chemical weapons against rebels and Iran's nuclear buildup -- Secretary of State John Kerry has put in place a series of temporary deals that aim to curb these threats.

Although the verdict is out on both of these, and each deal can backfire on the administration if they don't work out, for the time being the White House has calmed the storms.

Obama's supporters should hope that the tough moments of the year turn into learning moments for the President, hardening him for the coming year and giving him a better roadmap about how to push for his agenda in the upcoming year. They might take some solace from President Ronald Reagan, who enjoyed some of his most important accomplishments in his final years in office -- the signing of the INF Treaty with the Soviet Union -- as well as President Bill Clinton, whose approval ratings skyrocketed in his final years.

The good news for the president is that there is time left to win back public support and build on his record for the history textbooks. He also can gain some optimism from the fact that he is facing a deeply divided Republican Party whose approval ratings are even worse than his.